Cordelia De Brossos, true to her namesake in King Lear, has spoken truth in her Yale Daily News 1/14/15 opinion piece "No Freedom Without Courage" about the murders of controversial editors of the Paris publication Charlie Hebdo last week. "
Not since the early days of AIDS in the 1980's at Yale have I sensed so much fear in society even among intellectuals. Before that, in my childhood in New Haven, it was the fear of McCarthyism which silenced many at Yale.
It would be easy for me to call that fear disgraceful, but it is human to be afraid. I feel fear myself writing these very words.
Just as I have protested for decades the elitist bullyism of a version of Christianity's Jesus which says 'No one can come to the Father except through me ' (John 14;6), I reject the bullyism of a version of Islam which says that those who reproduce images of the Prophet must be physically harmed.
Perhaps they must be forgiven as Islam itself preaches : Or "Tout est pardonne" as the cover of yesterday's Charlie Hebdo declares.
Martin Luther repudiated his own followers when reformers careened out of control destroying statues, images, and killing practitioners of so-called idolatry.
But Martin Luther was no saint even though he repudiated that violence. He was a vile anti-Semite and the rebellious religion he spawned has been complicit in Christians' anti-Semitism to this day.
Yes, I utter those heretical thoughts as a Protestant graduate of an Ivy League seminary. Must I be slaughtered by angry Christians for my words?
But dirty hands need not have blood on them too.
Dirt yes.: Blood no.
Lear's madness (IV;6) "kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill " is just that: Madness.
Paul D. Keane
M. Div. '80
M. Div. '80
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